Archives for August, 2010

The IEA is the bestest agency in the world at admitting peak oil without actually admitting peak oil. They’ve now achieved a record – three years in a row of precisely matching the language and predictions of the peak oil community without actually saying the words. Matthew Wild points out the incredible overlap: According to…

It is that time of summer here – the one where you can’t eat all the vegetables pouring out of the garden, and the farmers can’t keep up with all the stuff their farms are producing, and many things that are precious and rare much of the year are cheap and abundant. Besides eating yourselves…

Busy week here, as Eric attempts to wind up his online teaching class, my parents descend for a week of family projects and fair going, and we deal with the daily realities of a rapidly-onrushing fall, complicated (happily) by a long trip and an early Jewish holiday season. So I give you something I wrote…

This is the the time of year for most of us when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you…

Actually, it isn’t all that slow, because a decade ago, all of this would have been largely unthinkable. The problem is that we don’t see the gradual decline and fall – we are only vaguely aware that some things aren’t quite what they used to be, and our progressive narrative tells us that they will…

“Sauerkraut!” She said it with an absolute certainty, as though it was an order – get yourself some sauerkraut! It was said kindly, but as though I should have figured this out already for myself. And she was right. The woman sitting next to me on the bench outside my synagogue was a Russian woman…

You asked for baby goat pictures – we’ve got baby goat pictures! (Calendula meets Rubeus the cat) (Basil, one of Bast’s two boys in her set of triplets) (Goldenrod, the other buckling – not sure if you can really appreciate his gorgeous coloring!) (Asher holding Calendula, Goldenrod and Basil’s sister) (Phil the housemate holds Marshmallow…

I’m pleased to see Grist exploring Urban Agriculture in the US in their “Feeding the City Series”. America needs a focus on urban ag particularly because we have so deeply abandoned the ordinary and routine participations that city dwellers have always made to their foodshed. If you look at either our past or the present…

I didn’t know Matt Simmons personally, and after some of his frankly ridiculous claims about what was happening in the Gulf, I am a little ambivalent about writing about his demise. One is supposed to speak well of the dead, and while I think some of his work on the Gulf (including his early claims…

Dr. Isis is reconsidering the work-life balance issues with her usual thoughtfulness over at her blog, following on a longer conversation about the ways that this problem is (unfairly, obviously) shunted exclusively onto women. This is something I agree with – and I think her “Sack up, Dudes” is probably the most concise and accurate…